They say it’s never too late to try new things, but I don’t think most people include taking up kickboxing at the age of 56. That is just what Stuart Dansby did. He didn’t do it because he expected to win or become a champion, he did it to push himself, to ask himself what more can I give? In doing so, Stuart sought out the primal pursuit of combat sports. Stuart had never been the subject of a movie, the director (Carlos Arrieta) had never filmed an entire feature-length film, and the composer of the film had never scored for cinema or anything else in his life.
Taking the Fight is about testing your limits, it’s about remaining alive and curious. Through this film, at least three different people discovered more about themselves than they knew. In doing so, the film has now won 32 awards at various film festivals., That’s one hell of a takeaway.
The Contending: I’ve been a boxing writer in. Contact and fighting sports are not new to me. There’s a two-part question I want to start with. One goes to you, Stuart and the other one goes to you, Carlos. The first is, Stuart, what made you, in your mid-50s, want to take this on?
Stuart Dansby: Great question. By the way, I read some of your work. I loved your review of the Oscar de la Hoya documentary. I thought it was spot on. To answer the question, I’d always considered myself an athlete until I started trying to do this. I was trying to learn how to box and a friend of mine who was a kickboxer reached out to me and said I’ll teach you. The very first time he taught me, I literally felt impotent. I felt unathletic. I felt horrible. Towards the end, he said I’m giving you 30 seconds to hit me. And he stood in the pocket. He didn’t move. I tried the best I could to hit him. After 15 seconds, my hands are down at my sides, you could kill me and I couldn’t stop you. I felt horrible. I was like a rock ‘em sock ‘em robot. Even six months later when I was training, my coach said to me throw a high kick. I said okay, and I kicked him across the quad. He said no, I said a high kick, not a low kick. And I said it’s above your knee, motherfucker. That’s the high kick I’ve got, right? (Laughs). That’s how bad I was. As much as I was horrible, it captivated me because it was so challenging because it was so difficult, and because there’s this primal thing in there of can I step in the ring or a cage against another human being that has the will, desire, and the malice to render me unconscious? Can I take that moment and own it in my life and within that, at what point in our life should we stop achieving? At what point should we stop contributing and at what point should we stop growth, because that’s when you get old fast.
The Contending: I have said that so many times. When you lose your curiosity, that’s when you start dying. So Carlos, my question for you is how crazy did you think this guy was?
Carlos Arrieta: I still think he’s crazy (Laughs). But it’s true, I still think you’re crazy. The way this started was that we were in our studio, and we were editing another show. Stuart was there and he looked at me and said, hey, Carlos, you know what I’m doing now? I said what? I started training. I was like good for you to stay young. He said no, to fight. I’m like, fight what? And he said mixed martial arts. I said why would you want to do that? Aren’t you too old for that? He immediately started explaining to me why. Three minutes into his explanation, just the way that he was answering my question was very motivating. I said listen, do you mind if I record this? So I pulled out a camera, and pulled out a mic. Looking at the documentary, you see him talking against a red wall. That interview was done ten years ago. I pressed record, and he spoke for, I don’t remember how long, but it motivated me, everything that he was saying. I’ve never done a long feature, but why not? It’s never too late. Based on what you’re saying, can I follow you through your journey? He said actually, yeah, that would be awesome. I still think he was crazy throughout. Sometimes he would call me at four o’clock in the morning—I’m going to go train. I was like today, film yourself. So yes I thought he was insane until I started seeing how motivating he was, how determined, and focused. As I was filming him, Stuart had two personalities: the Stuart that is extremely focused and then the regular Stuart, and you can see it in the documentary sometimes. There’s one little part that he filmed himself and he’s like my knees are like balloons and I’m tired, and then all of a sudden, he takes a breather and you even see his pupils get smaller. That’s the focused Stuart. He just switches like that to go and do what he wants to do. And that’s the motivating part.
The Contending: Carlos, on the fact that you’re a first-time director, of a feature-length feature. I recently spoke to Eric Drath who 15 years ago made Assault in the Ring, which was about the Billy Collins/Luis Resto fight, which had really tragic implications for both fighters. He didn’t think of himself as a director. He worked in a newsroom. He had some experience, cutting and shooting, but not really a director. What struck me, and I think I’m picking up some of this in what you’re saying too, is that he directed it because he wanted to see it. He directed it because he wanted to be the person who told that story. Does that resonate with you?
Carlos Arrieta: The reason I directed it and I wanted to do this is because once I heard Stuart in that initial interview, there were a lot of things going in my mind on how I can improve my life. And it’s not only my life with business, but also my personal life with family, with friends, and I just view life a little bit differently. To be honest with you, I feel that this world needs a lot of that type of motivation. When I talked to Stuart about doing this, I said I don’t want this to be about fighting. I want to deliver the message that whoever watches it is motivated enough to go out of their comfort zone and do something that they’ve always wanted to do, that either they haven’t had the courage to, or somebody has told them that they can’t. My motivation wasn’t to become a director, or win awards. My background comes from audio, and I do commercial work. I just wanted to do something good for people. Just if, on the weekend, you’re going to go and help out feeding the homeless, or whatever. I wanted to put something out there that would motivate people. So I didn’t see it from a director’s point of view, and I didn’t see it from a point of view about maybe wanting to get into fighting or training. Obviously I don’t train, but it was more about that message. Stuart motivated me, and I can tell you about other motivations that he did for other people. So that was my inspiration to jump on this, the title director is just a title. I just wanted to deliver that message. So anybody can put whatever title they want on me. That wasn’t the purpose.
Stuart Dansby: I was pouring my heart out to Carlos and he looks at me towards the end and says this is not a fighting documentary, and I sat back and I’m like what do you mean? He said this is not a story of fighting. I’m like what do you mean? He said this is a story of love. We both had an epiphany and I said you’re right. It’s the love of a dream. It’s the love of the team that surrounds me. It’s the love of all these fighters that push me. This is a story of love. I think at that moment, we both were committed to just what he said. We have got to share this message
The Contending: Three movies popped into my head while I was watching Taking the Fight. One’s going to make sense to you. The other two are probably going to make no sense to you at all. One was Rocky. And then the other two were, believe it or not, Purple Rain and Eight Mile. When I think about all three of those movies, what happens to the character at the end is not so much about winning the fight or getting the record deal. It’s about proving to yourself that you could do the thing, that you could go the distance, that you could perform. Does that resonate with you to think of it that way? Wins and losses are not insignificant, but I think there’s different kinds of wins and losses. Sometimes the win is the doing of the thing.
Carlos Arrieta: Let me answer that first. Rocky, by the way, that’s how Stuart has described this documentary, just like that. The other two movies, I see a hundred percent of what you’re talking about. To be honest with you, one of the things that motivates me when I talk to Stuart is the first fight that he lost, of course he was upset and everything, but I remember later on off camera, he said I didn’t lose. I gained. I won. I was like, what do you win? You lost. He said no, I won knowledge and experience. So he never sees anything from a negative perspective. And that’s what motivates me to do everything in life, that’s what kept motivating me to continue following this nut job for seven years.
Stuart Dansby: We have an expression in fighting: you win or you learn, anything in between is ego. Yeah, but I didn’t get it. Shut up, that’s ego. Did you win? No, okay, choose to learn because anything else is ego. And I did tell Carlos that because, you saw the documentary, I didn’t even know where I was at the end of the first round. I was literally out on my feet. I should have been called out, right? But I won the third round. I came from a dark place where I couldn’t even function. And I won the third round. I fucking won. And fighting has taken me to places physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually that are extraordinary places of growth. And if I lost every fight I ever had, I would still have that, if that makes sense.
The Contending: You were faced with the moment of doubt in wondering if this was all foolhardy and you found it within yourself to prove to yourself, in that moment at least, prove your other self, the one that took this journey in the first place, that I was right right.
Stuart Dansby: There’s a conversation I have, and I did a keynote speech last month and I talk about this. During a training camp, I got my ass kicked so badly by a 135-pound fighter on a Friday. So bad. I took so many knees. I was peeing blood the next morning. The next morning I got up and I sparred with Yoel Romero. Yoel Romero called me out. And I didn’t beat Yoel Romero that day. I’m sure you know that name, I’m sure you know the monster that he is and he calls me out when he walks in and I’m exhausted, but I embraced that moment. My coach was in my ear ripping me and he’s like you’ve got to want that moment. You’ve got to want that moment when everything sucks, when you want to quit, when you want to die, when you think you can’t breathe, you’ve got to want that moment, not get through it. You’ve got to embrace it. And I didn’t beat Yoel Romero that day, but I gave him the best round I ever had. Who I beat on that Saturday…was Stuart Dansby from Friday. And that’s what mattered. That’s all that mattered.
The Contending: I do want to talk about the scoring, by the way, but one thing I thought was lovely was the easy acceptance it seemed that you had from all these younger guys around you, Stuart, who really respected you and took you seriously. I admired you, but that was the easy part. I did not expect to admire so many around you whose names may not have been mentioned and whose faces I only barely saw, but saw you.
Stuart Dansby: It’s a beautiful community. There’s so much love there with your teammates and it’s earned. You earn that and not necessarily because of my skill level. I say this often. I don’t know what it is, but for every round I’ve won, I’ve lost at least 10. I’ve gotten my ass kicked 10 times to be good enough to win one, over and over. So you earn that. People were coming up to me and saying you’re inspiring me and I’m looking at them like—I’m going to speak candidly—I’m trying to knock a motherfucker out and not get knocked out. I don’t know what you’re talking about. But it kept happening and happening. And after my first fight, It happened more and that’s when I just said okay, we want to pay this forward. We want to share this message. But that means I have a responsibility if I am inspiring people. I have a responsibility of how to conduct myself. And that means every round, if I’m getting my ass kicked, I still have to give it everything I have. And I have to have a smile on my face. If I get dropped by a liver kick, I better not get mad. I better get better. And I still need to hug my teammate when I’m done and say thank you for that great round. And it’s surprising when you’re in that kind of environment, the real professional fighting camp, and you’ll be going at each other, trying to just BAM, and as soon as the round’s over, I can’t tell you how many times a teammate grabbed me and says love you, bro. Love you. And that’s the way it really is. It’s earned respect because you’ve shared the pain and the suffering and the beauty of the sport.
The Contending: You see it a lot of times in big boxing fights where people talk terrible shit about each other before the fight happens. Then when they go toe to toe, they just turn into different people because they’ve gone through it together.
Stuart Dansby: It’s an extraordinary bond. You saw it, especially in that first fight with Stevie and I. After it was done, you couldn’t have scripted something like it, where somebody picks you up, but you saw it immediately in the ring. We’re hugging each other. The referee had to come over and say hey, can you guys quit hugging? I have to announce a winner (LAughs). You don’t see that on camera, but that’s actually what happened. Ray Ramos was like come on guys, break it up.
Carlos Arrieta: You guys were having a full-on conversation on your future relationship and everything, and yeah, we had to cut all that out because it was like 20 minutes and they hadn’t announced who the winner was.
The Contending: When you were shooting Stuart getting kicked over and over in the solar plexus, what was that like for you? I know what it was like for me to watch it: it was terrifying. What was it like for you to film that? It’s necessary, of course, but boy you know, Stuart’s a guy of a certain age shall we say. Were you ever wondering whether you might have been veering into a space of not being responsible?
Stuart Dansby: Go for it, Carlos. I know what you’re going to say. Go for it.
Carlos Arrieta: Yeah and I’ll say it after I answer that question. Most of the time, you saw in the credits, there were multiple camera operators. Obviously I did the main camera, but I used some of my guys as well. For example, in the fight, okay let’s have two cameras so we can have two different angles. And then I was directing them on what to do on the training side. When I was there and he was training hard, if I’m behind the camera, I was so focused on capturing the moment and being in focus because I can’t tell him wait, do it again. This is not scripted, so I had to capture the moment. I could not let go or forgive myself if something happened and I didn’t capture it. So my focus was a lot on that, but yes, there were moments that I cringed. I’m looking through the lens and I felt his pain.
Even after that first fight, when he was in the locker room and he’s telling Stella I think I broke a rib or something, and he’s like touching, just that touching part, I felt it like I’m the one that got kicked. In reference to being irresponsible… I do want to give you a disclaimer: I am a good person. But Stuart asked me five years into it hey, listen, when are you going to finish this film? And I said first of all it’s a documentary. It’s not a film because it’s not scripted. I kept repeating that. I understand he gets hit in the head many times, so I understand he can forget things (Laughs). And he said is there anything that I can do to help you finish? I said get into the ring in a very big fight and then just die while you’re fighting. That’s an ending. And he’s like you a-hole. I was like listen, I don’t know when there’s an ending to it because, to be honest with you, his determination does not have an ending, still doesn’t have an ending, still keeps going on. Still, if I have a bad day, I give Stuart a call and after I hang up, I feel better. So there is no ending. But yeah, I did offer that irresponsible solution within five years. And it took another two years until I finally said we’re done.
The Contending: There’s also a mystery about shooting a live documentary. It’s one thing if you’re shooting about something that happened 30 years ago and you’re collecting footage, but I would suspect that you find the movie as you go along and you hope that you hit an end spot that feels fulfilling. Except that Stuart, I think your relentlessness was going to find a way there one way or another.
Stuart Dansby: Some people think I’m corny for what I’m going to say, but I honestly believe we’re trying to put a positive message out in this world and we both committed to this fully with all of our passion, with all of our skill, as did so many people that came forward. The making of the documentary parallels the challenges of my fighting career and is the same lesson of people coming forward. So we both put everything into this, but you’re right. There isn’t an exact ‘when do we end’ spot. Heading into my last fight, we didn’t expect for that fight to be in the documentary. I just wanted to take another fight. And the challenges, you saw in the film, with the state of Florida Athletic Commission motivated the promotion to make it a title fight. It was giving them, in my opinion, the middle finger because they put me through a lot of challenges, which in turn was great content for the documentary. It really worked out. I went down for promotion day to do interviews and pictures and the promoter said hey, Stuart’s going to be filming his documentary here. I looked at him and in my head, I’m like I am? I remember going home, calling Carlos and I’m like dude, he just said this. It just dropped into our laps. I’ll go back to what I started: we’re trying to do something good, I think God had a hand in this. The story I kept trying to end, it wasn’t written yet. It wasn’t written. That’s when I called Carlos. We tried to get in to film that. We couldn’t because there were already other cameras. But we did get authorization to use their footage. And that’s when we realized everything came together. They made it a title fight. I was blessed enough to win that night. And that’s when you say all right, now it’s come to fruition. Now you can see it. Here’s the full story. But just how do we tell that story?
Carlos Arrieta: It does not come across in the documentary because I didn’t want to take it towards this, but just behind the scenes, what’s extraordinary is that that interview of Stuart in that t-shirt in my office 10 years ago is what drove the entire documentary. I say that he’s like a witch. He saw the future, because everything he said, he lived it after he said it. It’s hard to convey that in the documentary and I didn’t want to make that the focus, but that’s why I was like really, let me see if he’s going to do what he said. Let me see if he’s going to surround himself with the right people. Everything he said 10 years ago, during those seven years, he did one after another. They were like milestones. He knew exactly where he wanted to go.
The Contending: So there are two questions that I have left for you guys. One is probably a little more on your side, Carlos because it involves more of the pure filmmaking side of it. This could have been a grungy, but still charming, likable, inspirational documentary. When you say it’s not a film, I know you mean the difference between documentary and narrative film, of course. But, the quality of Taking the Fight is high, the way that this is edited, shot, and scored. I wanted to make sure I mentioned the score because the score is fantastic. And I think that’s why you won so many awards and it’s been vetted at so many different festivals. It’s an extremely well-made film. How did that all come together?
Carlos Arrieta: The many parts: let’s talk first of all about capturing the images. Stuart trains almost every single day. And at every hour. Starts at four o’clock and he’s still training at seven p.m. After work. Obviously, I do have a wife and I do have kids and I wasn’t going to leave my family for Stuart (Laughs). There were a lot of parts in between that I would get my camera guys to do. I do own a post-production company. All we do is commercial work and 3D animation, but it’s commercial work. Broadcast. So for me, you shoot in a day, edit three days, and you’re done. This long-form was mind-boggling because it’s like it’s never ending. Then you’re cutting in pieces and then something else happens throughout the story so this piece is irrelevant now, we need to cut it with this. And then no, this is irrelevant now. So at that point, we need to stop cutting until I feel that I have an ending. The camera operators that were involved in this are guys that I’ve traveled around the world with. They know all our gear. They know the lenses. They know the type of look that I like. I like a lot of stuff with shallow depth of field. I am a colorist as well. So they know exactly how I like my footage. All the commercial stuff that we do, we shoot everything in a log. We shoot everything raw and even though there’s more post-work, I know that I can give that higher-end finish to it if I have the image captured first. The company is called ROAR Post, because we started up as post-production, but the reason we got into production over 20 years ago was because I was tired of people that do production, directors and DPs, always saying we’ll fix it in post.
Why don’t you capture properly from the beginning? Why do you have to fix it in post? That’s how I got into production. I’m a geek, I’m a nerd, and I’m very technical. The lowest resolution I want at eight bits. Once 4k came, I’m like let’s go 4k. I don’t care how many hard drives. But why? I want 4k so if I need to crop something, I could crop. So that was the capturing side of it. Then post-production came. I started cutting parts, but then at the same time, I said you know what? I am not a filmmaker. I never considered myself a filmmaker. Let me bring in an editor who has done this before. I told Stuart, I think this is the only time that I’m going to invest outside of my business to people that have done this. Out of those seven cuts, the first four were done by filmmakers and they were not getting the point. They were making it about fighting. It was all about action. I was like okay, thank you. Here are your fees. Bye. Let’s start again. Stuart and I were talking and I said I need to get somebody in here who is not a filmmaker, who understands and gets the message, but is a good editor. That’s when we got to one of my main editors, Carlos Pita. Once Pita gave me the rough—because that’s all I asked for—I cut the beginning, cut the end. Give me the rough, and I’ll go ahead and finish everything else. So now we’re in post-production. I said let me start working on the audio. So of course, here comes my legal training. We can’t show this person’s face. There’s these kids here that were saying these things …we have to redo the whole soundtrack (Laughs). So I started sound designing and replacing stuff. I made sure that I did not bring in anybody to do any ADR (automated dialogue replacement). Because again, it was a documentary. I wanted this to be raw. I wasn’t going to be like hey Stuart, I didn’t understand what you were saying. Come in here and re-record this line. No, I wanted this as organic as possible. I’ve played keyboards since I was very young, so I’m a musician. I’ve done jingles in the past and all that. And I was like man, now I need to score this thing. One day I’m sitting here in my home office thinking this is going to take me forever. I’ve been at this already for many years and Stuart’s getting antsy. He’s like when are we going to be done? When are we going to be done? And at that particular moment, my oldest son, who was turning 16, walks into my room. He started playing keyboards and guitars at the age of 13 or 14, just by ear. He can’t read music. He walks in and he said hey bubby, what are you doing? I said I’m figuring out what to do with the score of this documentary, the music that goes behind it. He said can I give it a shot? And I said the style of music that you listen to is not where I want this to be. No. And he said you got to be like that? Let me give it a shot. You want to give it a shot? Okay. Let’s watch this entire documentary with no music whatsoever. We went to the living room, I took my laptop, connected to a TV, pressed play and we watched the entire documentary. At the end of the documentary, he looks at me and says I got an idea. He gets up and he leaves, and he comes to my room three hours later and says, I got three tracks for you. Give me a hard drive. So I give him a hard drive. And I was like, okay, what are these tracks? Okay, in this part where Stuart is training with this other guy, that Latino guy, that Hispanic guy. I’m like yeah, the Argentine. Put this music there. I put it there, and I was like okay. In my mind, I wanted more, as they call it, cinematic, more orchestral sounds. And he said yeah, but, not everybody listens to that type of music. So how about some kind of fusion? Put some electronic instruments in it. Fine, go for it. What about the other two tracks? Put them here. I put them there, and I picked up the phone and called Stuart. I was like dude, I know who’s scoring this. He said who? Nico. I’m like dude, you need to listen to this shit, and I played it for him. And then I called my wife, and I’m like come over here, listen to this. And she said oh my God. And I said alright dude, this is the period that you have. I want you to score the entire film. So he’s 17 years old right now and it took him about a year and he scored everything, and actually in four festivals, he won a best score. Once we saw that documentary here at the house, and it was just us, the family, just to go over the final cut, Stuart asked him, hey Nico, so what motivated you to want to do this? And he turned around and he looked Stuart straight in the eye and he said you did. Thanks to your story, I got out of my comfort zone to do something that I never thought I could do. And that’s how we finished the post production.
The Contending: Here’s what has been coming to me as we’ve been talking: you’d never directed a film before. Stuart, you’d never been a subject of a film before. Obviously your son had never scored a film before. But, there’s that point where you say you have to surround yourself with the right people, and surrounding yourself with the right people is not as easy as it sounds because some people are fugazis. This collective that came together to make this film, almost in a found sort of way in some regards, from the subject to the director to the young man who scored the film, was all people who said to themselves why can’t I do that? And I think that’s the point of the film. Whatever walk of life you’re in, it doesn’t even have to be kickboxing. For the three of you, it was all about why can’t I do this? That’s the message of the film that I took away.
Stuart Dansby: Agreed. And there’s an earned trust there. It’s got to be earned, and it comes from work ethic. And it comes from setting your ego outside the door and looking at the bigger goal of what you’re trying to achieve. Carlos and I had a relationship, obviously, before this. We’d done some work on a television show that my wife and I had, and he said if you ever want to do another project let me know, and that’s how this started to come to fruition. But there was already a trust there. One of the things I knew, he probably doesn’t even know this, is when he said I’m going to do this, we have a contract now. We have a company together. I just knew on a handshake when Carlos Arrieta tells me that he’s going to do this, that he’s in. I also knew that I had to be patient within his work schedule and I had to be the constant energy to keep it going. To push in the right way. And that’s how all of the team came together. He didn’t share this part with you, Carlos Pita stood up to him and said you’re looking for editors everywhere. You’re talking to people in LA. I’m here. I know Stuart. I know Stella. I know his story. Give me this film. There’s a big story here. It’s the power of the team. Cause I haven’t accomplished shit. I haven’t. We have accomplished all of this. And it’s the power of the team. Carlos Pita won four awards for editing. Carlos Arrieta won five for directing. So he hasn’t told you that but the whole team contributed and they all got that what it’s about is, why can’t I do this? If I really understand what my dream is and I want to give it that, I want to give it that ‘I want it more than I want to breathe’ energy. Those people will come forward. Now, you have to have the thoughtfulness to recognize the real people. And recognize the people that are going to help you for a moment. And the people that, if you give them more back than they gave you, and they’re good people, guess what? They’re going to bring back, and they’re going to come back with more. And that’s how this whole thing came together. Where at some point, I know we just looked at each other and were like okay, we’re all in, man. Nothing’s gonna stop us. Nothing’s gonna hold us back. We are all in. We’re going down this road together. And we’re gonna fucking figure it out.
Carlos Arrieta: We can talk about all the awards that we’ve won and everything. To be honest with you, yes, it means something. I’m not going to brush it off and say that’s meaningless, I didn’t do it for awards. No, I didn’t, but it feels good having them in the back. What has been rewarding for me (of course my wife’s going to give her opinion, obviously she’s biased, I’m married to her, same with family and all that) is 1: what my son was able to accomplish, which now turned into what he wants to go to college for. Because of this, what he accomplished for me is more rewarding than any award that I got. And 2: when I hear you, David, somebody I’ve never seen before, a stranger, get the point and feel motivated by this story from people that you’ve never seen before, comparing this documentary to amazing films that I could only dream of being a part of. For me, that message coming across to you is as rewarding as what my son has accomplished, a lot more than any of these awards. So I do want to thank you for your honesty and your opinion and getting the point of the story too.
The Contending: Thank you so much for that. I thought the title of the film, Taking the Fight, works on multiple levels. Taking the fight in the most obvious way is I’m going into the ring, right? But the fight you were really taking was within yourself. That was the fight you were trying to win.
Stuart Dansby: 100 percent on point. You got it.
Carlos Arrieta: And when we talked about the title, the moment that we both said this is it, was when we were going through all the footage, because again, you can’t remember seven years of footage. We have hours and hours, actually days and days of footage. When we first started this documentary, the highest resolution was 1080 and it was shot with an HVX 200 and the first P2 card. I think the first GoPro didn’t even exist. This evolved so much. But when we got to talking about the name and were going through the footage, it was something Stuart said in the interview that was now 10 years ago. He said we all have a fight. That’s when we said that’s it. I am taking the fight to get this documentary done. That’s my fight. By the way, it was cut seven different times. Six of those times, we went back and watched it and said nope, this is about fighting. Delete. Start from scratch.
Stuart Dansby: Yeah. It was either about fighting, or it was my nightmare of just being narcissistic, look at me, look at me. That’s absolutely what I didn’t want. It had to be that fighting is the metaphor, I’m the conduit to deliver the message. And the message has to be the all-powerful force within that documentary. And that’s what Carlos did, bring my story to life.
Taking the Fight is available to stream now on Amazon Prime.
